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German uses the Latin alphabet just like English, French, and Spanish, with one extra (non-Latin) letter, the eszett and umlauts, which are not used in English. Eszett is pronounced "ss". It is only found in the German alphabet, it looks like this: ß. Umlauts are dots which can be placed above three of the vowels in German, and which change the sound of them. They look like this: Ä, ä, Ö, ö, Ü, ü.

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eszett and umlauts on keyboard

When people don't have a German keyboard, or the software required to use extra symbols on your own keyboard, they can write the umlauts by adding the letter "e" after the basic vowel. These umlauts would then look like this: Ae, ae, Oe, oe, Ue, ue. The pronunciation remains the same. The eszett can also be written ss. In Switzerland, the eszett is never used, it is always replaced by ss.

German is spoken widely in Europe and in communities around the world.

The spread of the German language until ca. 1945 in Central Europe. Orange marks Lower German, blue Middle German and green Upper German dialects.

West Germanic was an ancient language that evolved into many different languages including German, English, Frisian, Low German and Dutch. German evolved from West Germanic between 400AD and 1200AD when people in southern and middle regions of Germany started pronouncing several consonants differently. This language is now called Standard German ("Hochdeutsch", literally "High German").

West Germanic dialects were still spoken in the northern and western regions of Germany and evolved into the regional language now called Low German or Low Saxon ("Plattdeutsch"). For many years the people of these regions of Germany struggled to understand one another. It wasn't until the 1800s that a common language was developed, called Standard German, that allowed the people of the highlands and the lowlands to be able to speak to one another.